1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electrical contact (crimp contact/solderless terminal), one end of which is connected to a terminal of an electrical wire and the other end of which is connected to a mating electrical contact connected to another electrical wire.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A conventional technique of making a pair of electrical contacts (crimp contacts/solderless terminals) out of metal plate so that one end of each electrical contact connects to a terminal of an electrical wire and the other end thereof constitutes a contact portion, and connecting the contact portions of the pair of electrical contacts to each other is disclosed in, e.g., FIG. 10 of Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2000-21485.
Each of the pair of electrical contacts is provided at one and the other ends thereof with a swageable wire fixing portion and a bifurcated first conduction contact portion having a slit, respectively. The wire fixing portion is a portion to be connected to a terminal of an electrical wire by being resiliently deformed via pressure contact. On the other hand, the first conduction contact portion is a portion to be connected to the first conduction contact portion of the other (mating) electrical contact with an angular displacement of 90 degrees about the axis of the electrical wire relative to the first conduction contact portion of the mating electrical contact, and the first conduction contact portions of the pair of electrical contacts are electrically connected to each other with the slits thereof being engaged with each other.
Upon passing a large electrical current through the pair of electrical contacts having the above described structure, since it is necessary to reduce both the contact resistance and the conductor resistance, it is desirable for the contact area between the first conduction contact portions and the cross-sectional area of each first conduction contact portion to be made as large as possible by increasing the thickness of the metal plate that is used for the material of the pair of electrical contacts.
However, if the thickness of the metal plate is increased, the thickness of the wire fixing portion increases accordingly, which makes it difficult to perform a wire connecting operation for fixedly connecting an end (exposed end) of an electrical wire to the wire fixing portion by crimping or swaging the wire fixing portion.
Moreover, in the electrical contact disclosed in the above-mentioned Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2000-21485, when a twist occurs between the pair of electrical contacts, the contact state between the first conduction contact portions becomes unstable, which may deteriorate the contact reliability therebetween.